Table Of ContentM A K E B U I L D H A C K C R E AT E
hsmag.cc January 2020 Issue #26
Building
TT
AA
HH
WW a kiln
+ Melting glass with
a Raspberry Pi
Jan.2020
Issue #26 £6
CIRCUIT
PYTHON
SOLDERING
WITH GAS
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EE
PICKING TT
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AN IMPACT RRII
PP
DRIVER
mate
SMEAWCIHNINGES rFeipnldic tahteo ru flotir 2020
KIM
Arduino CNC
data log milling FREEBURN
Talks autonomous racing robots
Store info on your microcontroller Carve out objects automatically
PAINTING CANDLES HAIR-DRYERS INFILL
191029_AWAIT_HS_UK.indd 1 10/10/19 4:43 PM
WELCOME
EDITORIAL
Editor
Ben Everard
Welcome to [email protected]
Features Editor
Andrew Gregory
HackSpace magazine
[email protected]
Sub-Editors
David Higgs, Nicola King
Automatic replicators have been the stuff of science fiction DESIGN
Critical Media
for generations. For a decade or so now, 3D printers have
criticalmedia.co.uk
been on the verge of promising to make this a reality, but Head of Design
Lee Allen
they’ve been fiddly and hard to get to work reliably at an
Designers
affordable price. In the last year or two, it feels like there’s Ty Logan
been a real shift, not in the underlying technology, but in its Photography
Brian O’Halloran, Nikolai Linares
ease of use. Non-technical (or moderately technical) users
CONTRIBUTORS
can now buy affordable
Lucy Rogers, Drew Fustini,
In the last year or two, it feels like there’s
3D printers and use them Jo Hinchliffe, Jon Rusho,
Mayank Sharma, Andrew Lewis,
been a real shift, not in the underlying reliably, and that’s a huge Glenn Horan, Gareth Branwyn, Les
Pounder, Marc de Vinck, Poppy
technology, but in its ease of use step. Of course, it hasn’t Mosbacher, Demetrio Pinna
happened uniformly PUBLISHING
Publishing Director
across the industry, so in this issue, we’re looking at the best
Russell Barnes
3D printers around, and what experiences people have had [email protected]
Advertising
in their homes and workshops. Could 2020 be the year 3D
Charlie Milligan
printing goes mainstream? [email protected]
DISTRIBUTION
BEN EVERARD Seymour Distribution Ltd
2 East Poultry Ave,
Editor [email protected] London EC1A 9PT
+44 (0)207 429 4000
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GET IN TOUCH
This magazine is printed on
hackspace@ paper sourced from sustainable
raspberrypi.org forests. The printer operates an
environmental management system
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h ackspacemag HackSpace magazine is published
by Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd.,
Maurice Wilkes Building, St. John’s
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hsmag.cc editor, and contributors accept
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noted, content in this magazine is
licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-
ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-
SA 3.0). ISSN: 2515-5148.
3
Contents
126
SPARK LENS
06 33
06 Top Projects 34 What 3D printer?
What’s impressed us this month All the knowledge you need to choose your next replicator
16 Objet 3d’art 50 How I Made: Glass kiln controller
3D-printing: tastes good, will save the rainforest Monitor the temperature of molten glass
18 Meet the Maker: Kim Freeburn 56 In the workshop: Gold repair
Creator of accessible robotics company, PiBorg We try the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi
22 Columns 60 Interview: Chan’nel Vestergaard
On the mutable magic of FPGAs How one self-taught maker is bringing science to the masses
24 Letters 68 Improviser’s Toolbox Hair-dryers
Your requests, rants, and recommendations What fun we can have with hot air and a fan
26 Kickstarting
Connect I2C devices to your desktop computer Tutorial
28 Hackspace Geekspace Gwinnett
Build a
Geeking out in Georgia (USA)
baby monitor
Cover Feature
AATT
HH
WW
RR?? 90 Big Brother is
EE
NNTT watching you
RRII
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Dfiisrscto3 ivnDe- rdp terhipnett hirne gcso usmlutsrmv oeufyn tihtye 18
34
4
CONTENTS
Direct from Shenzhen
USB power adapter
56
Interview
Chan’nel Vestergaard
106
114 Phenomenal USB power
with an itty-bitty price tag
73 FORGE
74 SoM CircuitPython
60 From self-taught Arduino tinkerer, to visiting
Use maths and code to generate waveforms MIT fellow, via shoes made from pineapple
76 SoM CNC routing
It’s time to put the metal to the plywood 116
80 Maker’s Toolbox: Impact drivers 113 FIELD TEST
We’re talking about torque
84 Tutorial Sewing machines 114 Direct from Shenzhen USB power manager
Get started with this makerspace stalwart Turn a puny 5 V into 30 V with this affordable doohickey
88 Tutorial Painting 116 Best of Breed
Protect and beautify your builds with paint Our favourite learn-to-solder kits
90 Tutorial Build a baby monitor 122 Can I Hack It?
Craft a surveillance device for your tiny human Get under the hood of a kids’ electronics kit
96 Tutorial OctoPrint 124 Review Gas-powered soldering iron
Set up control software for your 3D printer Take hardware hacking on the road with this portable tool
96
100 Tutorial Logging 126 Review Let’s Start Coding
Capture environmental data from an Arduino An accessible way into learning microcontrollers
106 Tutorial Open weather station 128 Review All About Circuits: Tools
Interpret open data with a simple IoT build Outsource your electronics calculations with this excellent website
110 Tutorial 3D print infills 129 Book Review Unix: A History and a Memoir
Give your prints structural strength A rose-tinted history of this ubiquitous computing platform
Some of the tools and techniques shown in HackSpace Magazine are dangerous unless used with skill, experience and appropriate personal protection equipment. While we attempt to guide the reader, ultimately you
are responsible for your own safety and understanding the limits of yourself and your equipment. HackSpace Magazine is intended for an adult audience and some projects may be dangerous for children. Raspberry
Pi (Trading) Ltd does not accept responsibility for any injuries, damage to equipment, or costs incurred from projects, tutorials or suggestions in HackSpace Magazine. Laws and regulations covering many of the topics
in HackSpace Magazine are different between countries, and are always subject to change. You are responsible for understanding the requirements in your jurisdiction and ensuring that you comply with them. Some
manufacturers place limits on the use of their hardware which some projects or suggestions in HackSpace Magazine may go beyond. It is your responsibility to understand the manufacturer’s limits.
5
Top Projects
REGULAR
6
SPARK
Giant LED
By Robert Fitzsimons hsmag.cc/OlgTmx
T his giant LED is completely pointless, but as a
great man once said, all art is quite useless. It
is, however, completely beautiful. Everything
is created by Robert, from the casting to the
handmade moulds, the only off-the-shelf parts being
the electronic components. He’s made a series of
videos documenting the process, showing a Zen-like focus on
perfectionism that we think shines through in the finished article.
In the first version, for example, the legs were made of 6 mm
copper tubing; in the final version, they’re cast resin with brass
welding rods embedded for strength and conductivity. To get
the right compromise of transparency and diffusion, Robert
has included 0.0075% zinc oxide (white pigment) into the resin
that makes up the LED bulb, and every aspect of the build has
undergone loads of tiny tweaks and modifications to get as close
to perfection as possible. This is a great build.
Left
Modelling the shape of the LED was easy (says
Robert): it’s just a sphere, a cylinder, and another
slightly larger cylinder, with a chunk taken off on
the cathode (short leg) side
7
Top Projects
REGULAR
Dragonfly
By Jack Spiggle hsmag.cc/xyEjKy
T his is a BEAM robot, which stands for
biology, electronics, aesthetics, and mechanics.
BEAM robots are characterised by extremely
simple circuitry, controlled directly by hardware and
reactions to sensors, rather than logic programmed
into a microprocessor. They tend to be very simple,
performing only one function – robots may move toward a light
source, for example, or away from a heat source. As such,
they’re a way of physically modelling the behaviour of simple
creatures, motivated by primal things like a need for food, water,
or WiFi.
This flapping, solar-powered dragonfly was built by Jack
Spiggle, aka NanoRobotGeek, using the guts of a broken radio-
controlled flying toy dragonfly. Most of it has been replaced with
a snazzy free-form soldered circuit made from brass rods.
The dragonfly stores energy from a solar panel in capacitors
until it reaches 4 V, at which point it dumps it into the wing-
flapping mechanism. You can see capacitors soldered into the
dragonfly’s tail – these add up to 2200 μF, which is only enough
to give the wings a slight flicker. To add extra power, Jack hid
an extra 4700 μF capacitor in a hole drilled into the wooden base
under the solar panel. This combined 6900 μF is enough storage
to power the wings through a whole cycle.
Right
We’ve tried free-form
soldering before,
and it’s harder than it
looks to get anything
that works, let alone
that looks good
8
SPARK
9
Top Projects
REGULAR
10
